In Our Hands the Stars

by Harry Harrison

With a gasp, something between pain and hatred, she turned, fled, running, slowing down. Anger, terrible anger burning her. How could he have done this! She gasped again.

  Only when she reached the front door of her home did she realize that she was still carrying her sandals and that the soles of her feet were sore from the concrete sidewalk. Shaking, she put them on and remembered that she had no key. She raised her fist, but before she could knock Skou opened the door for her.

  “Watchfulness is our password,” he said, letting her in and then closing and locking the door behind her.

  She nodded, went by him, unseeing. Watchfulness … that was very funny, it should be her password too. She didn’t want to talk to him, to see anyone. She went past quickly and on into the bathroom. Anger was burning her now, tightening her throat, impotent anger that she could do nothing about. She shouldn’t have run away! But what else could she have done? With a sob of rage she turned the cold water full on, plunged her arms into it, splashed water onto her burning face. She could not even cry, her rage was too strong. How could he! How could he!

  She ran her fingers through her hair, unable to face herself in the mirror. If he was not ashamed, she was. She stroked at her hair violently with the brush. Married men did things like this, she knew that—a lot of them in Denmark. But not Nils. Why not Nils? Now she knew. Had he done it before? What could she do now? What could she do about him?

  With this thought she had a sudden image of him coming home, here, wanting to embrace her just as if nothing had happened. He would do that—and what would she do? Could she tell him? Did she want him? Yes. No! She wanted to hurt him just the way he had hurt her. What he had done was unforgivable.

  Her throat was tight and she had the sensation that she would break into tears at any moment, and she did not want to. What was there to cry about? What the hell was there to cry about? There was plenty enough to be angry about.

  She stood quickly, wanting to get away from her reflected image. As she did she saw the little spiral-bound notebook on top of the laundry container, and she picked it up because it did not belong there. When she opened it automatically, wondering what to do with it, she saw that the pages were covered with rows of neat calculations, more strangely shaped symbols than numbers. She closed it quickly and went to her room, shutting the door and pressing her back to it, the notebook held tight against her breasts.

  If emotion can be said to replace the logical order of rational thinking, this was surely one of the times. Baxter had scarcely bothered her of late, but she was not really thinking about Baxter. Or about America and Denmark, or loyalty or patriotism. She was thinking about Nils and what she had seen and, perhaps, though she was not aware of it, she wanted to hurt him in the way he had hurt her.

  It was all quite easy to do. Locking the door behind her, Martha went to her bureau and took the camera out of the drawer. She had put film in it just yesterday, getting ready for Nils’s homecoming, fast color film to make a permanent record of this holiday. There was a patch of sunlight on the rug by the bed, streaming in the open window. She put the notebook on the floor and opened it to the first page. When she sat on the edge of the bed above it and looked through the viewfinder it was just right. Just one meter, the closest she could take a picture without blurring it. The image of the pages was sharp and clear and the camera automatically set the exposure.

  click

  She advanced the film, bent over to turn the page, then braced her elbows on her knees again.

  There were still ten frames left when she finished the last page. So she took pictures of the back and front covers because she hated to waste film. Then she realized that this was just being foolish, so she closed the camera case and put it back into the drawer. She took the notebook and unlocked the door and went out, and met Arnie coming up the stairs.

  “Martha,” he said, blinking in the darkness after the glare outside. “I woke up suddenly and realized that I had misplaced my notebook.”

  She shrank back slightly, her hand—and the notebook-pressed tightly to her.

  “There it is!” he said, and pointed. He smiled. “How nice of you to find it for me.”

  “I was taking it to your room,” she said in a voice that sounded shrill and artificial, but he did not seem to notice. She held it out.

  “And right you were too. If Skou found it lying around he would probably have me returned to the Moon at once. Thank you. I shall just lock it in my case so I will not be this foolish again. I am sorry I fell asleep like that. Some guest! But I feel much better for it. It has been a wonderful day.” She nodded slow agreement as he went into his room.

  19

  The Jaguar saloon moved steadily north along the coast, staying exactly at the posted speed limit. Nils drove easily with one hand while he tried to find some music on the radio.

  “We are starting out a little late,” he said. “Do you have to stop in Helsingør?”

  “I have to go to the post office. It will only take a minute,” Martha said.

  “What’s so important?” He found a Swedish station that was playing a peasant polka, all yipping and stomping.

  “I have to send off some film for developing.”

  “What’s wrong with the photography shop next to the grocer in Rungsted?”

  “They’re too slow. This is a special place in Copenhagen. If you think I’ll make you late just drop me off by the ferry and you can go on by yourself.”

  He took a quick look out of the corner of his eye, but she was looking ahead, her face expressionless.

  “Come on! This is a holiday—of course I’ll wait. I just don’t want us to miss the launching—or ascension or whatever you want to call it. You’ll love it. These tugs will just drift down and latch onto the ship and lift it right up out of the ways. They’ll install the drive on the Moon.”

  They had to wait at the ferry slip while a fussy little steam engine pulled a string of Swedish boxcars across the road.

  “Look at that yard donkey,” Nils said. “Leaking steam and oil from every joint—and still dragging trains off the ferry. Do you know how old it is?” Martha apparently did not know, nor did she appear too interested in the answer. “I’ll tell you. It’s on that plate on the side of the cab. Eighteen ninety-two that antique was built, and still on the job. We Danes never throw anything away while it still works. A very practical people.”

  “As opposed to we Americans who build cars and things to break down at once and be discarded?”

  He did not answer, but drove past the station and turned down Jernbanevej to the post office at the rear of the terminal. He parked and she got out, carrying the small package. Film. He wondered how long she had had it in the camera. She certainly had not taken any pictures since this holiday began. Some holiday. Bitchy, he thought, during my entire leave. He wondered what could possibly be bothering her; he could think of nothing. He saw that he had parked next to a hot dog stand, and his stomach gave an interested rumble at the sight. They would be sure to have a late lunch and he ought to be prepared. He went in and ordered two of them—raw onion, ketchup and mustard—then canceled the onion when he remembered that they would be at the launching with all the politicians and bigwigs. He had to remember this place; they had beer too, so he washed the pølser down with a cold bottle of Tuborg Gold.

  What was the matter with Martha? She was not unresponsive, but there was a coldness that made her roll away from him in bed at night. Perhaps it was the tension of the Moon flights, the sabotage and all that. You never could tell about women. Funny damn creatures. Given to moods. He saw her coming out of the post office and hurriedly finished the beer.

  Nils never had a moment of doubt. Nor had he once, ever since that Sunday afternoon, ever even thought about Inger.

  20

  Mars

  It was almost noon, so that here on the equator, at midsummer, the temperature had shot up to almost 30 degrees below freezing. The hill, really one flank of a great circular crater, rose up
sharply from the plain. A much shrunken sun glared down on the frozen landscape from a black sky, where the brightest stars could be easily seen. Only at the horizon was the atmosphere dense enough to trace a thin line of blue against the sky. The air was still, with a timeless silence, so thin, almost pure carbon dioxide, that it was almost not air at all. And very, very cold.

  The two men climbing the steep slope had hard going despite the lower gravity. Their heavily insulated, electrically heated clothing hampered their movements; their battery packs and oxygen tanks weighed them down. When they reached the crest they stopped, gratefully, to rest. Their features were hidden by their masks and goggles.

  “That’s … quite a climb,” Arnie said, gasping for breath. No expression could be seen on Nils’s shrouded face, but his voice was worried. “I hope it wasn’t too much. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought you?”

  “Fine. Just out of breath. And out of shape. It has been too long since I have done anything like this. But it is worth it, really, a simply magnificent sight.”

  The silent landscape reduced them, too, to silence. Chill, dark, alien, a planet that had not died because it had never been born. The tiny settlement below was like a welcoming light in a window, a single touch of warmth in the eternal cold of Mars. Arnie looked around—then stepped quickly aside, beckoning Nils after him.

  “Is anything wrong?” Nils asked.

  “No, not at all. We were just standing between the sun and this Mars-kål. It is starting to close up. It thinks that it is night again.”

  The foot-long and widespread starfish-like, arms of the animal-plant were half closed, revealing the rough, grayish underside. When completely closed they formed a ball, insulated against this incredibly harsh environment, holding tight to the minuscule amount of heat and energy the animal-plant had obtained, waiting for the sun to return once again. When it did, the arms would unfold to reveal the shiny black plates of their undersides, which captured and stored the radiation from the far distant sun. This tough growth was the only form of life discovered yet on Mars and, although its nickname “Mars cabbage” was now the official title, it was looked upon with respect, if not with awe, by all of them. This was the only Martian. Both men stood carefully aside so that the sunlight could fall on it again.

  “It reminds me of some of the desert plants in Israel,” Arnie said.

  “Do you miss Israel?” Nils asked.

  “Yes, of course. You do not have to ask.” Because of the thin atmosphere his voice was a distant whisper, despite the fact he was talking loudly.

  “I imagine you would. I know a lot of countries, and most of them look a lot more interesting than Denmark when first you fly in. I could live in any of them, I suppose, but I would still pick Denmark. I wouldn’t like to leave. I sometimes wonder how you managed to pack up and leave Israel on principle. I doubt if I could do a thing like that. Doubt if I would have the guts to do it myself.” He pointed. “Look, there it is, just like I told you. You can see the entire area from up here. There are the new buildings, just going up, and the landing area laid out beyond Galathea, When they will be needed, more buildings can be constructed along the eastern side. There is going to be an entire settlement here-a city some day. The railroad will go from right down there to the mountains where the mines will be.”

  “A very optimistic project. But there is certainly no reason why it should not work out that way.” But Arnie was thinking about what Nils had said. About Israel. It was a topic that he worried to himself, like a sore tooth, and he could not stay away from it. Although he rarely talked about it to anyone else. “What did you mean, exactly, when you said that what I did took guts? I did only what I had to do. Do you think that it was wrong-that I owed Israel loyalty ahead of all mankind!”

  “Hell, no!” the big pilot said, and managed to get a boom of warmth into the whisper of his audible voice. “I’m on your side, don’t ever forget that. What I really mean is that I admire what you did, not selling out. If what you say is true, then staying would have been the big sellout. The same way that scientists have been selling out since the word science was invented. Bombs, poison gas, and death for the sake of my fatherland. That’s the direct sellout. Invent the atom bomb-then moan about the way it is being used but don’t stick your neck out. The indirect sellout. Or the wool-over-the-eyes sellout: I’m working on nerve gases, germ warfare, bigger bombs, but they will never be used. Or the world-is-too-big-for-me-to-do-anything sellout, the one everyone uses. Dow Chemical makes napalm to cook people. But I can’t stop buying Dow products, it won’t make any difference. South Africa has the best police state in the world and a country full of legal Negro slaves. But I’ll still buy their oranges, what can I do? You can blame yourself for how I feel, Arnie.”

  “What on Earth—I mean what on Mars—do you mean?” He stamped his feet as the cold began to seep through the soles of his boots.

  “I mean that you did what I think I would not have had the guts to do. You stuck by your convictions, no matter what your personal loss. There have been all kinds of Dow and South Africa boycotts in Denmark, and I ignored them. Or laughed at them. What could I do? I flew and I lived well and I enjoyed myself. But you got under my skin, showed me something different …”

  “Stop!” Arnie said, shocked. “You don’t realize what you are saying. I did a traitorous thing, betraying my country and her trust in me and depriving her of the results of the research that rightly belonged there. I went outside the law. If a scientist can be said to have an oath, I have surely violated mine.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “I am sure you don’t. Your view is one-sided, unthinking, even more biased than mine. I admit my crime. Yet you offhandedly blame all scientists for all the sins of the world. You speak of atomic bombs. But what of atomic power plants and radioactive medicines? You blame scientists for inventing explosives, but don’t talk about the plastics that stem from the same chemical fundamentals. You speak of bacterial warfare, but not about the virus-killing medicines that came from the same research. You may try, but you cannot blame science and scientists for the world’s ills. We physicists may have made the atom bomb, but it was the government that financed it and elected politicians who decided to drop it. And the people at large seemed to have approved of the decision. Scientists don’t make war-it is people who do. If you try and blame the scientists for the condition of the world, you are just using them as scapegoats. It is far easier to blame another person than to admit one’s own guilt. Enough South Africans must enjoy being legal slave owners or their government would not stay in power. Remember what Machiavelli said, about the fact that a Prince could not rule in the face of the active opposition of the people. The Nazis did not exterminate the Jews—the German people did. People have the responsibility of their deeds, but they do not like the weight of this responsibility. They therefore choose to blame others. They say that the scientists, who invented bombs and planes and guns, are responsible for the state of the world today. But the people who elect the politicians who make the wars are blameless. Do you really think that it is that way?”

  Nils was shocked at the sudden anger. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just said I admired—”

  “Don’t admire a man who has betrayed his country’s trust in him. Even if my decision proves correct, I have still done an unforgivable thing.”

  “If you feel this way, why did you leave Israel at all and come to Denmark? I know that you were bom in Denmark and grew up there. Was that the reason why?”

  The Martian silence closed in for long seconds before Arnie spoke again.

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps because of faith—or hope. Or maybe because I am a Jew. In Israel I was an Israeli. But everywhere else in the world I am a Jew. Except in Denmark. There are no Jews in Denmark-just a lot of Danes of varying religious faiths. You were just three or four years old when the Nazis marched across Europe, so it is only history to you, another chapter in the thick books. They are monsters—demo
ns in that they could unlock the evil in other hearts as well as their own. The people in the countries they conquered helped them fuel the ovens. The French police went out and arrested Jews for them. The Ukrainians happily fed the furnaces for them. The Poles rushed to see their Jewish neighbors cooked, only to be melted down themselves for their loyalty. Every invaded country helped the Germans. Every country except one. In Denmark the police were shocked to hear of the coming purge. They passed the word to others who were equally horrified. Cab drivers cruised the streets with telephone books, looking for people with Jewish names. Boy Scouts passed the warnings. Every hospital in the land opened its doors to the Jews and hid them. In a few days every Jew who could be reached was smuggled safely out of the country. Do you know why the Danes did this?”

  “Of course!” He clenched his large fists. “Those were human beings, Danes. That sort of thing just isn’t done.”

  “So—you have answered your own question. I had a choice and I made it. I pray that I was right.”

  Arnie started down the hill, then stopped for a moment.

  “I was one of the people smuggled out to Sweden; So perhaps I am repaying a debt.”

  They went down, side by side, to the light and warmth of the base.

  21

  Copenhagen

  “There’s no point in our taking both cars,” Martha said into the telephone. “We can fight about which one later, all right … Yes, Ove…. Is Ulla ready? … Good. I’ll be there in about an hour, I guess…. Yes, that should give us plenty of time. We have those seats in the reserved section and everything, so there shouldn’t be any trouble. Listen, my doorbell just rang. Everything’s all set? … See you then.”

  She hung up hurriedly and went to get her housecoat as the bell rang again. All she had to do was finish her face and put her dress on-but she wasn’t going to answer the door in her slip.